Abstract：By taking electroosmosis as the driving force, a micrometer-range micromixer based on vortex-conducted is presented. In the design, a mixing quadrate antrum is placed to be a mixing container, in which the upside and underside wall is placed in a stable horizontal electric field, the electroosmosis flow is formed for the double electrical layers on the inner wall sides. The electroosmosis flow can drive its nearby fluid to move in a certain direction. However, the left and right sides of the mixing quadrate antrum are closed, and there is no electroosmosis taking place, so according to conservation of mass theory, some part of fluid will flow in a reverse direction contrastively to that of electroosmosis flow. By this means, some annular flow configuration are formed, that is, some shapes of vortexes can be created. Based on the above principle, two mixing modes of single-vortex mode and double-vortex mode are studied quantificationally with numerical simulation to discuss the performances of the mixer, especially of the stable and the dynamic mixing characteristic. It is proved with the numerical model that the proposed micromixer can perform high-efficiency, continuous and stable mixing, which has those advantages of short mixing channel, simple structure and convenient operation; as to the two mixing modes, the double-vortex mode is more significative in practical case.
2010, Vol. 28 
